Grammar girl here. This week I have a quick and dirty tip about a vaccine versus a vaccination.

A piece about why people sometimes say punctuation marks out loud.

And a tidbit with my favorite story about a weird 18th century grammar rule.

Long, long ago in my email newsletter I explained the difference between a vaccine and a vaccination.

And now that it's the season to get flu shots and people are talking about Ebola vaccines,

I thought it would be a good time to include it in the podcast.

A vaccine is the fluid they inject into you or the aerosol you inhale.

It's the preparation of an inactivated microbe or virus that stimulates an immune response

that helps protect you from disease. For example, a nurse could report that the vaccine arrived

yesterday. Picture a tube of liquid. A vaccination is the shot you get.

It's the introduction of the vaccine into your body. You get a vaccination when someone

administers the vaccine to you. A nurse could say we can start giving vaccinations now or we run

a vaccination clinic. We typically think of a vaccination as something that protects you from

getting sick if you encounter a bacteria or virus in the future. That's how the flu vaccine

works. It won't do any good if you get it after you already have the flu. But occasionally,

scientists also use the words vaccine or therapeutic vaccine to describe a treatment that triggers

an immune response after a person has been infected. Right now, researchers are working on Ebola

vaccines that might do both. Help people resist infection and respond better after they've been

infected. In summary, the vaccine is the liquid itself and a vaccination is the act of administering

the vaccine. And that was your quick and dirty tip. Next, I have a piece by SIL graves about how

and why people say punctuation out loud. This is in reply to some interesting questions and observations

posed by a reader named Frank T. He had two observations. First, recently President Obama said

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